Do you let your tenants pay rent at different times?

Does your tenant have to pay on the first of every month?

As a landlord, our goal is to get the tenants rent at the beginning of each month. In a perfect world, that would happen 100% of the time. I broke this rule 4 years ago and couldn’t be happier. I decided to be more open to new ideas and it has paid off in spades.

I found a great tenant that had a good long term job, excellent rental history and was very honest upfront. My rental property was in a pretty competitive area and I was the higher end of the month rent spectrum. Instead of giving up good monthly cash flows by lowering the rents, I held out and man did it pay off.

I got a A+ tenant but, I had to allow myself to go outside the box to make this lady my tenant. She is an older widowed lady that gets social security survivor benefits 6 months out of the year. In order to rent from me, and pay the higher rents, she needed me to be more flexible on rent collection times.

She had looked at numerous properties, most cheaper than mine, but no one was willing to think outside the box and do what I did. She needed to pay the rent on the 3rd week of each month. Here is what I did to make it a WIN-WIN situation and get her in the property asap.all this was drawn up on a separate contract and signed along with the lease.

Tenant paid $164.00 at beginning of next month and $980.00 of the balance on the third week of the month.

Tenant continued to pay $164.00 on the first week of the month for a total of 6 months ($980.00)

After the 6 months, she paid each months rent on the third week of that month.

By collecting a month’s worth of rent (broken up over 6 months) I was able to have 1 month secured, if my tenant did not on the third week of a given month.

This strategy has worked out great and she is a very clean and nice tenant. She is very appreciative of my willingness to work with her and she has even made improvements to the house, at her own expense.

If I would have been inflexible like the other area tenants, I would not have been able to have such a good tenant living in my property and allowing me to cash flow nicely on a monthly basis.

Allow yourself to think outside the box when working with a prospective tenant. I know we are hesitant to do this because of all the professional tenants (less than desirable people) and con artists out there but get a good read on the person and trust your gut. you can get lucky and pick up a great new, long term tenant.

How has thinking outside the box with your tenant allowed you to be successful?